Perry Henry Young, Jr., born March 12, 1919 in Orangeburg, South Carolina, became the first African American to fly for a commercial airline in the US. His family moved to Ohio and began attending Oberlin College. He earned his private pilot's license at 20 and dropped out of college to pursue a career in aviation.
Unfortunately, Young could not find work as a commercial pilot due to racial discrimination. When the US entered WWII, he got a job as one of 40 African American flight instructors for the 99th Pursuit Squadron, and trained over 150 Tuskegee Airmen during his tenure.
After the war, he still could not find employment as a pilot. In 1946, he tried to establish a small airline in Haiti, but it closed. He remained in Haiti, flying for the Societe Haitienne-Americaine de Development Agricole and in 1953 began working for the Puerto Rico Water Resources Authority as an executive pilot.
He worked on Baffin Island, Canada as an aviation mechanic, and then moved to the Virgin Islands to pilot for KLM, flying passengers to the Dutch islands.
A helicopter airline, New York Airways, had previously rejected Young because he did not meet their minimum helicopter flight time, but decided to 'break the color line'. They contacted him in the Virgin Islands and hired him on December 17, 1956. He took his first official flight as a copilot on February 5, 1957.
He continued to fly for NYA until they went out of business in 1979. He flew sightseeing helicopter tours in New York until he retired.
He passed away in Middletown, New York on November 8, 1998.
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